Looking on the Bright Side

If you’re looking for some venting on how badly the Republicans allowed themselves to be played on this ridiculous shit sandwich Congress just served America, go elsewhere. Yes, we have some entrenched establishment types who have thrown in the towel. These Republicans need to be retired and replaced with younger conservatives who have not given up on taming the government Leviathan, can think strategically, are good at PR, and are willing to take some bold steps to cut spending. My husband got an earful, Tuesday, but as a longtime practitioner of Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, I won’t do it, here. That is exactly what the Marxist in Chief and his simpering minions in the media want, as you know – Obama wanted to “fracture” the Republican party. Why give it to them? I respect our members of Congress too much – including the ones who inexplicably voted for the shitburger – yes, even John Boehner himself. These are not bad guys – they were dealing with a tough, no win situation. Even fiscal- hawk, Paul Ryan voted for this mess. That should tell you how difficult this deal was.

Ramesh Ponnuru explained at The Corner, why House Republicans couldn’t amend the deal:

A lot of conservatives in the House wanted to add spending cuts to the Senate deal and spent hours trying to figure out if they could pass a version of the deal that included them. They failed, though, for the same reason Speaker Boehner’s “Plan B” failed.

You may recall that Boehner wanted the House to pass a bill that blocked income-tax increases for everyone making less than $1 million a year but allowed scheduled increases to take place for people who make more. He couldn’t get such a bill through the House, though, because Democrats wanted a bigger tax increase and a lot of Republicans didn’t want to appear to be endorsing tax increases for anyone. Republicans especially didn’t want to vote “for tax increases” since Boehner’s bill probably wasn’t going to become law. From their perspective, they would be sullying their voting records for nothing.

A deal-plus-spending-cuts bill faced the same hurdle. Republicans had to find 218 votes from their ranks alone; Democrats weren’t going to supply any votes for a bill to the right of the Senate deal. And a lot of Republicans didn’t want to vote “for” tax increases — bigger ones than many of them had rejected when Plan B was being considered. Again, they especially didn’t want to do that when the bill had a good chance of dying in the Senate.

In short: A lot of Republicans wished the deal included more spending cuts without being willing to vote for a deal with more spending cuts. That’s why this effort failed.

… for now, most Republicans are happy to see the fiscal-cliff episode end, even if it was with a whimper and much disagreement. “People wanted to get this finished, move on, and fight another day,” says Representative Bobby Schilling of Illinois, who voted against the plan. “There is unhappiness about how the Senate went about this, but that wasn’t enough to stop the vote.”

Conservative groups, such as the Club for Growth, Freedom Works, and Heritage Action opposed the Biden-McConnell deal, but their opposition was far from a unanimous position among right-of-center activists. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told CNN that the vote was “technically not a violation” of his group’s anti-tax pledge. Due to the fiscal cliff, “the tax cuts disappear and we’re restoring them for most people,” Norquist said. “We’re not raising taxes.” In the Senate, tea-party stars such as Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) voted against it, but other conservatives, such as Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) voted for it. Across the board, Republicans were dissatisfied, but hardly united in opposition.

William Kristal, while making clear that he thought the cliff deal was “ridiculous in too many ways to count” and “a sad commentary on our politics today”, attempted to put a positive spin on it in his piece in The Weekly Standard:

….the deal is substantively better than going over the cliff and having all income and investment taxes go up, and having the defense sequester hit right away. And politically, Republicans are escaping with a better outcome than they might have expected, and President Obama has gotten relatively little at his moment of greatest strength. In particular, this should do it for new tax revenues, at a number lower than Speaker Boehner originally offered—and it should be pretty easy to have the next debate focus on spending and entitlements.

Okay, Kristol’s faith that spending will be addressed by this demented President and Democrats in Congress is somewhat optimistic…granted.

That leads us to this glass half full assessment from John Hinderaker of Powerline – they’re going to have to address….something, eventually…

But what happens now that Obama has gotten his way? It will soon become apparent that the fiscal cliff deal, including precisely the tax increases that Obama has been demanding for four years, makes hardly a dent in the deficit. At best, it will reduce the deficit by five or six percent. We will continue to run up deficits of close to $1 trillion a year, and the national debt will continue to grow, as Obama has always intended. This fact can’t be hidden; it will be reported. Journalists who have pulled their punches in the past because they wanted Obama to be re-elected will now begin to ask, what are we going to do about the deficit and the debt? At some point, perhaps sooner rather than later, interest rates will begin to rise, at which point the debt issue will become a crisis. And Republicans will say: we told you so.

The Democrats will have only three choices: they can try to raise taxes on the “rich” even higher. But raising them to 100% wouldn’t deal with the deficit, even if you assume all those rich people are willing to work for free. The second option is to restrain federal spending. The Democrats would rather die than do that. The third option is to try to raise taxes on all those millions of Americans who aren’t rich. That is what the Democrats will do once the moment arrives when they can no longer ignore the trillions of dollars in debt they are inflicting on our children. That will be, politically, a very bad moment for the Democrats and a very good one for the Republicans, who can offer the alternative of less spending and who will have been proved right with respect to the biggest policy debate of recent years.

All of this is another way of saying that, with the Democrats’ BS about raising taxes on the rich out of the way, we can have a rational debate about the country’s fiscal future. And that is a debate the GOP can win, as most voters continue to believe that it is better to cut spending than to raise taxes on them. So let’s not despair: the post-cliff landscape may well prove favorable to the sorts of reforms that have been impossible for the last four years.

For all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on the professional right, it’s important to understand that this ship sailed on November 6. Mitt Romney lost the election. The President ran on higher taxes for the wealthy. The status quo of existing law was the President’s position. This cake was baked on election night.

Yes, it’s stupid, wrongheaded policy. It doesn’t make a whit’s worth of difference to my tax return, but we will never know the full impact of the jobs that won’t be created because we’re confiscating more than half of what the job creators earn, and incentivizing them to keep what they’ve already earned on the sidelines, instead of investing it.

But here’s where the game changes.

For years, every time level-headed leaders have tried to address the spending crisis, the liberal retort has been that the rich have to pay their fair share first.

Well, it’s done. The President won. He can’t ever again say that the rich aren’t paying their “fair share.” According to his definition, they are now.

And now, his second term is going to be defined by dealing with a spending crisis so incredibly massive that if you could tax every “rich” person 1,000% a year, you still wouldn’t solve it. And we reach that “cliff” in mere weeks when we hit the debt ceiling.

I’m interested in playing the blame game as our beleaguered economy continues to get worse instead of better….

… I’m arguing that Republicans should agree to a modest tax hike on upper income earners to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, which would be devastating to the economy and to our national security. Obama is playing a political poker game, and it’s great fun for him, because he has all the cards. He doesn’t care a whit if we go over the cliff because he knows Republicans will get blamed for it and by demanding that Republicans agree to his tax increase, he believes the Republican party will be fractured.

That’s why Republican leaders must make clear that any increase agreed to was made under duress. As I said, the other day — make sure the public understands that Republicans are giving the President his tax increase only because it’s what the people who voted for him wanted, and because it’s better than the alternative – going over the cliff – not because it is the right thing to do. No smiles, and public pats on the back. They will need to be sore losers and tell everyone that hiking taxes on anyone while the economy is struggling is a bad idea, and they should walk out rather than vote for the shit sandwich.

Okay, nobody walked out, but I didn’t see any smiling faces among the Republicans, Tuesday. The Speaker looked like he’d been crying, in fact.

That’s good. Let the people see how unhappy they are with all this. Let Obama have his little “win”. Let him spike the football and crow to his base that he got Republicans to surrender against their will on taxes. It will be abundantly clear to everyone who the Captain of this sinking ship known as America is. We’re all going to suffer because of this man’s lack of seriousness on the economy. But at least after this, he won’t be able to blame Republicans for it.

9 thoughts on “Looking on the Bright Side”

I’m usually a silver lining kind of guy but sorry, any scenario that includes either journalists(HAHAHAHA) or any of the Obama Cultists “suddenly” coming to their senses is laughable-ain’t EVER going to happen.

Shit Sammich is exactly correct and I’d just as soon followed Levin’s suggestion, that is, pass a bill in the House lowering the 3 bottom marginal rates and leaving the top two where they now stand and plop in Reid’s lap and recess. Than when it’s not even voted on in the Senate and all of the SHTF, Republicans could say, hey we voted to lower tax rates so kiss off(I added that).

The time has come for pain to be felt-cut these social hammocks-stop the printing presses-let the rich Obama Cultists see their taxes go into the low 50s%.

I would like to agree with the 11th commandment if only on principle but cannot. As noted, there are many reasons why the action taking by republican leadership was necessary. I think we all need keep in mind the many power grabs and anti-American actions taken by the Obama administration during the past 4-years. Congress could have/should have taken action to weaken Obama but didn’t. That inaction emboldened Obama and has left the nation in terrible condition. He feels empowered to do whatever he wishes and we can and should blame the republican leadership for failing to provide the checks and balances mandated in the constitution. Had republican leadership kept Obama in check earlier we would not be having this discussion.

There was an 11th hour “deal” for the same reason there is always an 11th hour deal – the elected Republicans were too stupid to push their own deal through the House that they control, and consequently got packed in the rear, rightfully so, by the party of the common-man-haters because the common-man-haters can lie so soothingly and don’t give a rusty rip about our nation or whether it survives the coming decade, let alone this century.

Face it! The only thing the Democraps care about is power, and they know that all their lies, all their bought votes (with taxpayer money, no less!), all their crocodile tears over “the children” and “the poor” doesn’t mean squat.

The Democrat media complex’s chosen narratives don’t always win out – as I noted a few weeks ago when I posted: Only 19% Favor New Government Stimulus Spending To Jump Start Economy…

Only 19% of the American people favor another Obama stimulus, even after being told that it failed thanks to Republicans not letting it be big enough. Or it was just bad luck – the tsunami, the Arab Spring, Europe’s fiscal crisis hurting our economy, ATMs etc etc…. None of it was O’s fault according to the media narrative. What this country needs is ANOTHER stimulus, according to them.
Yet the vast majority of us reject that notion.
Sometimes their narratives are so weak, and the truth too damn obvious for their lies to succeed. I think that will be the case, here.

This is the biggest bunch of inept, dysfunctional group of people I’ve ever seen. These guys make the Keystone Cops look like a synchronized Olympic Team. The author of the 11th Commandment is most likely spinning in his grave, way before the latest debacle that has been a situation of their own making.

It’s disgraceful how far we have fallen! The sad part is most of it was self inflicted or could’ve been avoided by anyone with a much lesser degree of talent that supposedly what these clowns possess. It was all predictable and the final epitaph was etched in stone long ago.

And no the entire situation isn’t the fault of Boner either. He just happens to be at the helm right now and unfortunately for us, nobody sitting on the sidelines doesn’t seem to have any better talent. But, Boner needs to accept responsibility for his part in this mess, after all he was still in the position he holds now, when they “accepted and approved” the theory of “Sequestration”, proposed by Obozo. So in effect they loaded the gun and handed it back to the enemy [and they are the enemy] to be shot and put out of their misery at the appropriate time.

These asshats have been out maneuvered from the time Obozo threw his right hand up in the air. They have stood by and watched as “our” entire rule of law and U.S. Constitution has been shredded and the lawlessness has been flaunted right before their eyes. The Bill voted on last night was HR 8, passed in the House and sent onto the Senate at the beginning of the 112th Congress. That Bill languished in the Senate where Reid took zero action on it, till this weekend. Then the “stripped” the entire Bill [that was sent to them] rewrote it and sent in back to the House for a vote. That is unconstitutional because the Bill [as written] was not generated out of the House. Oh, and our guys got the “assist” on getting it done, unconstitutionally. The only response they seem to be able to come up with is, “we are going to get ’em the next time”. The only one who won this week is in the White House and I don’t see any legitimate scoring in our immediate future.

The final results of and the incompetence from “our leaders” was, they took a six foot wedge/hero/grinder Shit sammich, cut it into tiny finger sammiches and we are all going to get served leftovers again two months from now, when we get around to addressing the “remaining issues” they just avoided. Now there’s a real plan!

None of the major issues were resolved yesterday. The Military has only gotten a reprieve for a couple of months. For months now we have heard of “mutual and unthinkable” cuts agreed too by both sides. The only thing I heard for the last several months is the Tax Issue and Military Cuts. Where has the discussion been on the dopey lib issues that “they” were afraid of going into affect? Why is it that it was us who blinked and not them, if these were mutually unthinkable and destructible? Where were the cuts that was making the dopey libs shaking in their boots? While everyone was being told that taxes were not raised on 90% of taxpayers, they actually DID raise them [restored them] on 80% of taxpayers. The next big cave that will be coming up shortly will be, the Gun Control issue. I can hear the pitter patter of tiny feets running down the hall, waiting to line up with the other crowd on the issue. After all, who would want to be labeled as conspirators and complicit in the murder of children?

I have served my official notice, I will not contribute another dime to these clowns, nor will any of them get my vote, ever again. I am done, finished, kaput. I am tired of them taking a “leak” on my leg and telling me it’s only raining out. I don’t give a ratz ass about any of them, they all suck and I’m tired of having to choose from a list of lesser dirtbags. When Joe Biden is considered the “adult” in the room, we all have a extremely huge problem.

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